Menu
- Home
- Search▼
- List▼
- Add▼
- My Relate▼
- Admin▼
ViewsWatchers |
__________________________ [edit] Massanutten Settlement, Augusta County, Virginia"Massanutten Mountain", (sometimes referred to as "Peaked Mountain" in many records), nestled against the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, is a synclinal ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, currently located in what is now Page County, Virginia. The mountain bisects the Shenandoah Valley just east of Strasburg in Shenandoah County in the north, to its highest peak east of Harrisonburg in Rockingham County in the south. Wikipedia Massanutten was one of the early settlements in (then) Spotsylvania/Orange/Augusta County, Virginia, first established as early as 1727 or 1728 by Jost Hite, the great Shenandoah Valley Pioneer. Hite, with a number of relatives and friends, settled a few miles south of the Shawnee Spring (Winchester) in 1731. John Lewis and his followers founded Staunton in 1732. The names of the first Massanutten pioneers, are Adam Miller, Abram Strickler, Mathias Selzer, Philip Long, Paul Long (Philip's son), Michael Rinehart, John Rhodes, Michael Kauffman, and Jacob Stover. Their descendants are numerous and influential today in Massanutten land and adjacent regions of Page, Shenandoah, and Rockingham Counties, and many have gone afar to fame and fortune. Most or all of these pioneers were Germans who had first come to Pennsylvania or adjoining colonies; and as to religious affiliation they were chiefly Mennonites and Lutherans. They chose out fertile tracts along the winding Shenandoah and began to carve out busy homes in the wilderness. Massanutten was an "old field" (prairie) that nestled in a great bend of the river (south branch of the Shenandoah), just east of the New Market Gap in the Massanutten Mountain. The mountain at that time was probably called "Buffalo Mountain" or "Peaked Mountain"; but the gap was known as Massanutten Gap. At any rate, in 1746, when Thomas Lewis and his colleagues surveyed the Fairfax Line, the mountain was called "Peaked Mountain," while "Massanutten" was the name applied to the gap. At that time Philip Long was living on a fine tract only a few miles above Massanutten, at a place now celebrated as "Old Fort Long"; and the surveyors of the Fairfax Line visited him repeatedly. Today the Massanutten country may be readily located by the tourist who crosses the Massanutten Mountain between New Market and Luray on the splendid Lee Highway. Massanutten Creek intersects the road at the eastern foot of the mountain; and "Massanutten Heights," the historic old homestead on the bank beside the road, overlooks the actual Massanutten "old field" -- a homeland dear alike to red and white men, scene of romance and tragedy, theme of bard and chronicler. In 1924 Mr. Harry M. Strickler of Harrisonburg, Va., a descendant of one of the pioneers, published a most interesting book entitled "Massanutten," in which many particulars, both historical and genealogical, are collected. ["A History of Shenandoah County Virginia", Wayland]. [edit] First Families of Massanutten SettlementHead of Family/Approximate Year of Land Acquisition at Massanutten Settlement 
[edit] Other Later Settlers[edit] Sources
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
